AWS names 16 winners of ‘City on a Cloud’ challenge
Amazon Web Services announced the winners Tuesday of its third City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, honoring organizations and agencies that are doing unique projects in the AWS cloud.
The company granted a total of $550,000 in AWS credits — which can be used to purchase services from the cloud hosting company — to 16 winners in three categories, and recognized an additional winner for innovation leadership.
In its “Best Practices” category, AWS selected Los Angeles, the District of Columbia’s Health Benefit Exchange Authority, the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections platform, Utah.gov and Peterborough City Council in the United Kingdom as winners.
Los Angeles was honored for its “innovative and impactful local government projects,” including its security information and event management system that helped to consolidate security across multiple departments, said Ted Ross, the city’s chief information officer in a statement.
“We have over 100 million unauthorized attempts against our network every month,” Ross said. “Our ability to gather and synthesize large amounts of cyber threat data is critical to protecting LA and its digital assets.”
New York’s library system received recognition for a cloud-hosted platform that which allows people to access thousands of rare and unique research collection items. In Utah, AWS recognized the state for its work with Amazon’s Alexa. Washington, D.C.’s public health insurance marketplace, won for its ability to “accelerate innovation” and improve customer experience in the city’s health insurance marketplace, the release said.
In the “Dream Big” category, the company recognized Boston; Denver; Miami-Dade County, Florida; the South Central Planning and Development Commission in Louisiana; and U.K.-based Eduserv for their “innovative ideas for how to use cloud technology.”
Private sector firms Appriss, GRIDSMART, OpenDataSoft, SmartProcure and Utility Inc. won the partners in innovation award — given to the companies who use AWS’ cloud to help governments tackle local challenges.
In addition, Singapore’s Land Authority received the “Cloud Innovation Leadership Award,” given to early adopters of cloud technology. The city won for its OneMap project, which uses open government GIS and hosts the platform on AWS cloud.
Contact the reporter who wrote this story at jake.williams@statescoop.com and follow him on Twitter @JakeWilliamsDC.
